Take a leave of absence from your job or school, your MUD, and your PC. Get a passport and a ticket to someplace in the developing world. Go someplace that it's cheap to live and where a large number of people speak a language that you understand. * I suggest India for Americans * and travel around. Stay in cheap local hotels and hostels, take the local transportation, talk to the locals in the coffee shops, talk to the other travelers. Do it until you actually begin to feel comfortable (or at least not stressed to extremes of paranoia and xenophobia).
Then return home to live that you used to live and see how weird everything is in the USA. And then get back on Slashdot and tell me with a straight face again about how much we really need space travel and moon exploration. The subject will have come up again by then.
I've been to India. The Indian space program is a huge source of national pride for them. Being able to put satellites in orbit and handle their own GPS system has numerous benefits for a developing country (some of the projects we were shown included cheap GPS units for fishermen's cooperatives, and infrared monitoring of farmlands). I have no doubt that if they were able, they'd be trying to put a man on the moon as well.
Don't think that just because most of the world is poor and hungry, they have no interest in space travel. Regardless of our nationality, we all look to the sky and dream.
I don't think you understand the depths of poverty people living on $1 a day reach. Think of the same lifestyle as a homeless person here, except with no social services, no soup kitchens, no shelters. Not even the shopping cart full of junk. Doesn't seem too exciting to me, but maybe because I've lived next to such people for most of my life.
For 12 years I lived on $10 a day. That's living a low-end grad student lifestyle - i.e. just enough for dialup, a mid-range computer, tiny apartment, the bare essentials. $20 a day would probably get you the same lifestyle as a lower middle-class US worker.
$50 a day would probably better fit your definition of "comfortable" - still quite doable, especially if you sink some money into a local business.
Also note, as more and more money flows back into the country's economy, cost of living goes up (as there are lots of these young call-center workers who can afford more stuff), so in a few more years, plan on moving somewhere else. Africa?
> Oh, you also intended to start working right now on an agricultural wiki in Farsi/bhantou/whatever ?
They're not going to go on Slashdot and participate in flame wars. This is a way of enabling people in those countries who write in local languages to make their own local information available to more people.
Consider a local aid worker who makes a agricultural webpage (or even works on translations of existing web pages) and makes that available on the local network grid these $100 laptops are hooked to. You have the capability to be distribute your information to hundreds of remote farmer's cooperatives or collectives, and send almost-real-time updates on pest breakouts and market prices.
But yes, conceivably, some sort of Speak-and-spell-type software can also be used to teach illiterates to read. You have a screen, you have a speaker. Use them.
They don't even need access to the general Internet, just access to each other. Enabling communication between two villages that don't have any serviceable roads between them is a huge factor, and if the grid network of this laptop is effective, VOIP or IM can even serve to replace more expensive phone systems.
For those more cynical among you that say poor countries need political stability first, a local revolutionary movement can use these computers to coordinate and exchange information between cells or send information in/out of a repressive regime - again, better information, education and communication tools will be extremely useful in a lot of situations.
I guess you haven't been in a third world country yet.
This won't directly go to the "poorest people in the world"... this will go to the slighty less poor folk trying to help them. I'd imagine a lot of these will end up in farmer's cooperatives or collectives, used to distribute information to the farmers themselves. Sure, an illiterate farmer can't use a computer, but the local aid workers or agriculturists can.
And even if the parents are illiterate, the presence of cheap computers available at the local library will help make sure their children aren't (with $100 computers and some form of wireless access, small rural libraries are now feasible in areas where shipping books in useful quantities are too expensive).
I've seen a project in India where a guy accesses the US Navy Geographical Survey page, looks up local weather conditions, and broadcasts the current weather report over short-wave radio every morning to the local fishing villages. The main problem was maintaining an Internet connection and computer for the announcer guy. Being able to deploy even one computer and 'net connection (rudimentary dialup, whatever) per village instead of only in the bigger population centers will help in disseminating this information to more people.
The organizers aren't as completely out of touch with reality as some people here, it seems.
I think (especially since the perp was 41 years old) that this was merely a dispute between two MMO farmers over money.
Hey... probably business partners, running a small computer shop/farm... possibly they ran two separate farms. Found the item while in a party/grouped. Agreed to split the proceeds when the sword was sold.
And one of them doublecrossed the other...
Same story played out in dozens of drug deals every day all over the world.
Serious money is serious money. And I've seen people killed for less...
Katanas are Japanese. Bushido is Japanese. We're talking about the Chinese - the Middle Kingdom. Try thinking kung-fu and Shaolin, and you'll be closer.
1) Have you actually used a Select or Open license? Do you know how much of a bear it is to actually deploy across an enterprise? (i.e. vastly different from documentation, registry screwups, missing keys etc).
And the Educational versions of above licenses is exactly the same as the retail/OEM version. No additional admin tools, etc...
2) I'm just saying MIS departments who've been burned by the problems experienced with Win2k would be leery of upgrading to a version with an added "activation" feature which can introduce yet another point of installation failure. (especially for those of us outside the US with intermittent/unreliable Internet links).
because its easier to install one monolithic service pack than hundreds of seperate patches to deal with specific security problems as is the norm on the UNIX side of things
Well, most commercial *nixes do have "huge monolithic service packs". I've just finished setting up ten Solaris 2.7 servers, and all I had to do was run the Maintenance Update, then the latest Recommended package zip from Sun. Basically, two service packs.
You've just been looking at the Linuxes, where this level support is not there yet (although Debian and apt-get are getting there.)
Of course, if you routinely install GNU or open source software, you'd have to maintain that yourself, but any competent admin can roll their own update tarballs.
Admins aren't stupid because they use NT. It's just that stupid admins prefer NT. I've met some really competent NT admins, although for some reason they almost always look like they could use a lot more sleep.:)
Major problem - if you're an MIS tech suddenly faced with upgrading hundreds or thousands of PCs at once, this activation thingy is another thing that can go wrong. Anything that makes MIS's job harder is one less thing they'll be inclined to order.
One reason for the sucky sales of Win2000 - out-of-the-box, it doesn't play well with existing NT installations, so lots of corporate and government MIS departments haven't upgraded yet. This is MS's main revenue stream, the one which pulls in the big bucks. Doesn't matter if the MIS head is a Microserf or not, if the upgrade causes more lost revenues in terms of downtime and tech support than benefits, it's not gonna happen. And yeah, there are a lot of stereotypical PHBs out there, but if an upgrade causes a company to lose actual $$$, as opposed to the "benefits" and "increased productivity" of the upgrade (especially those that have been burned by the Win9x -> Win2k upgrade) even a die-hard non-tech PHB is going to take a second look before signing those purchase orders.
I'm just putting up the figures for anybody who's interested in the actual wages (as opposed to charity ads, etc) of someone over here.
I don't fully agree that if the multi-nationals left, we'd be worse off. Large corporations usually equate to massive corruption. There's also the effects of globalization and the forcing of third world countries to open up their markets, while the US refuses to drop tariffs on imports FROM these same countries.
Yes, in time our economy may develop to a point where we'll be able to compete. But due to the influence of First World governments and multinationals, that may never happen. All they want is sources of cheap raw materials, and masses of consumers for their goods.
Living in a third world country right now (but yes, going to bail soon) I can say that your $1/day figures were pulled out of someone's a$$.
A dishwasher at a local restaurant makes somewhere around $2 a day (along with free board and lodging). Mind you, this is just a dinky little canteen, not a 5-star hotel restaurant. I believe this is the same rate as day labor. Carpenters, plumbers, and other more skilled manual workers make around twice to three times that (i.e. $4 to $6 a day).
Employers are required to pay minimal medical insurance, etc, and are traditionally expected to treat the employee as a (albeit distant) member of his family, which means providing medical help, loans, and other benefits (which can vary widely from employer to employer).
From the price of food, yes, maybe I can feed a family of four on a dollar a day, but that would mean two, sometimes only one meal a day, and we'd be eating a whole lot of rice and dried fish (sometimes just rice and salt).
I make about $8 dollars a day, teaching at a state university (finished a Masters, thank you very much). A programmer in the city can expect anywhere from $15 to $50 (I'd been offered $40 as a VB programmer at a large multinational bank).
Multinationals pay way better than local companies, obviously. Unfortunately, the really plum jobs (director of IT, etc) go to foreigners (no matter that some of the locals have better qualifications). Sometimes the only way to go up is to migrate to a foreign country, get a citizenship, and come back and work for that company as a citizen of a first-world country.
People who work in sweatshops, contrary to common knowledge, are usually high-school graduates. Some are BS degree holders (I've a cousin with a Commerce degree who worked at the Reebok plant for a while, before she shipped out to HK to work as a maid). Hell, the guys at the local McDonalds are all working their way through college.
Children working are few and far between, although yes, some of the stories of workplace harrassment and exploitation are true (esp. for women workers). I'd say most of the exploitation is in the blatant manipulation of governments (i.e. bypassing local ownership requirement laws by setting up trust funds, misuse of employee pension funds, etc) rather than in child labor. But it's exploitation nonetheless.
All right, I'll bite. The US armed forces took the Philippines from the Spanish and subsequently fought the Philippine-American War (1899-1905), against armed opposition from the natives, who'd been fighting the Spaniards for centuries, and now had to contend with Gatling guns and modern warships.
After the rebels were crushed (or in some cases, paid off) the islands were administered as a colony until it was granted independence in 1946. Several recorded atrocities (including a US Army unit ordered to turn the island of Samar into a "howling wilderness" by marching across it and systematically destroying any villages they came across).
Mark Twain spoke up against US colonial aggression overseas, but it seems much of his work has been conveniently expunged from your schoolbooks (good thing they're still in ours).
No, I'm just saying piracy helps Microsoft, at least in getting their products spread out in third world countries.
Most Linux distribs can't be "pirated" - since most distributions allow you to download their software off the web and burn your own CDs. I'm just relating the experience of my local LUG - we find the mass-produced pirate RH cds unusable, because most of the pirates are Win9x users.
Don't have anything against piracy (like I said, used to be a warez kiddie). But as I see it, success for the BSA here means a larger market for free software.
I remember the Microstar expansion sucked, big time, and it was the fans that pushed Blizzard to sue them. The mission editor license specifically stated that you could make your own campaigns, but you could not sell them, without the express permission of Blizzard. I.E. enjoy your campaigns all you want, but you are not allowed to make money off of them. Seemed fair to a lot of us campaign makers.
> Both, actually - clueless AND underfunded. > Makes sense. You live there; isn't there a way to get this changed?
I thought we were getting somewhere after the last revolution, but we seem to be backsliding these days. Ah, well. I'm too old to be marching in the streets these days, anyway. My father may be right, you may learn to live with corruption.
> My apologies.
Accepted.:) I don't do IRC, so I really can't tell how off the mark you were.:)
>Do you have anything to back up these 'bribes'? Could they instead have been payments Microsoft made to the local law enforcement for their >assistance in the raid? This is a pretty common thing, as far as I know. Microsoft hasn't the right to do a raid, and law enforcement doesn't >always have the time/money to spend on such a thing, so the companies offer to reimburse the law enforcement for their expenses or pay their >officers overtime. This seems logical and has nothing to do with being 'bribed'...
All right - this isn't in the US. Our local constabulary have to be bribed to investigate murders, kidnappings (most of them, there are a few good cops, though). The BSA doesn't have funds for a major, coordinated, nationwide operation like that one (several large raids, in the period of a couple of weeks). Newspaper articles say "with the cooperation of Microsoft".
> Clueless or underfunded? Really, if they're that clueless, you should write them a letter and send your resumé. They should be DYING to get > their hands on you, since you're clueful, unlike anybody they have on staff right now, right?
Both, actually - clueless AND underfunded. I know most of the local police, including their chief back then (who did tell me of the baksheesh the BSA handed over to get them to "participate".)
Most of the agents participating in the raid weren't local boys. The local police were paid to "supervise". Actually, most law enforcement here think going after pirates is beneath them (we've got more music pirating than software pirating, here).
> Umm.. It sounds to me like this is an issue with your local newspaper, and not with those responsible for the raid.
Maybe. He was the only shop raided in town. There are at least six or seven. He was the only foreigner (and one the local police didn't particularly like).
> Wow, you are l33t. Were you saying this to enhance your credibility in this thread, or just to show us how long your warezpenis is?
Hmm. I shouldn't reply to an ad hominem attack, but I forgot to mention that I'm NOT one of those "big fish" I mentioned. I used to be one step up from the end-operator - I ran shipments twice weekly from the capital to the province. We didn't have the internet back then, either. CDs, without jewel cases. I don't think the US has any equivalent for what we used to do. And the poor shopkeeper WASN'T a big fish, he was one step below me, and I wasn't even a suspect. The BSA did the raids, took some pictures. Case closed, publicity shoot over. nobody got hurt.
Hey, I'm just offering a view from outside the US. I'm sorry if I came off too "elite", but that was what I was doing eight years ago, to pay my way through college. I had sporadic contact with BBSes (no phones, no Internet, etc) so I'm not up to your terminology.
So here's something near and dear to the hearts of you slashdotters - warez helps microsoft, and hinders open source.
I work in a third world country. Years ago, WordStar was the dominant wordprocessor, Lotus 1-2-3 was the dominant spreadsheet. Microsoft made DOS, and little else.
All pirated of course. We were much too small a market for Lotus or Microsoft to set up shop here.
When Win95 and Office came along, every single office with computers upgraded to it. Warez, naturally - everybody just bought CDs and installed 'em.
So now 1-2-3 and Wordstar are but memories. Every single PC is loaded to the gills with Office 2000 and Win 2000 beta. Microsoft suddenly decides to expand their market presence, and what do they find? Hundreds of secretaries, office workers, and PHBs who already know Word, Excel, Access and Powerpoint.
See, now it's hard for Linux to compete with free copies of Win98 and Win95 floating around (oh, sure, the warez shops also copy Red Hat, but they do it so badly that most Linux CDs here are worthless (they burn under win9x, resulting in broken links, unbootable cds, missing files, etc). Our local LUG has found that the most reliable way to get Linux is to burn it ourselves.
So. Helping the BSA will help Open Source. Think about it.
(Disclaimer - I'm an ex-warez kiddie turned sysadmin. I think the BSA is powerless, in the form it is in right now.)
Don't know if it helps, but two years ago, the BSA staged a raid on a shop down the street from where I live. I believe with the collusion of the local police, gov't agents, etc - I hear a lot of Microsoft money changed hands (i.e. bribes to local gov't officials, "donations" to government offices) in order to do these raids. A major computer school franchise was also raided at the same time.
You probably saw one of these, picture of mounds of confiscated CDs, fake boxes, etc, etc. I agree - publicity is everything. These raids are calculated to instill the fear of piracy in other schools, universities, computer shops.
The problem is, they're too clueless to actually make a dent in the infrastructure. (The local papers trumpeted the "major piracy ring busted" line, and said that poor shopkeeper down the street was the ringleader of the piracy ring, just because he happened to be a foreigner (Belgian). Heh.)
At that time, I just left the local warez scene (I knew who the major suppliers were, I knew people who could ship you Microsoft Office CDs in quantities of thousands, etc, etc.) That shopkeeper was just a customer - he used to buy CDs off me before I got out of the biz. And the raids didn't touch ANY of the big fish, just the small, end-of-the-line shops.
Anyway. Back to the shop down the street. Two weeks later, after a few small bribes to the local constabulary (to get the confiscated equipment back) it's back in business, but this time they're turning away anybody who looked like a suit. They're a bit more careful, but that's all.
Nothing will change. Not until Microsoft gets permission to train and equip its own storm troopers to actually conduct the raids (though, judging from the marketing personnel they've got running the local office, they'll probably do worse.:)
Yep, I've personally run into that SMTP relay bit. I don't know all that much about Notes/Domino internals, though, but I did advise my client to move to a more capable MTA. Haven't taken my advice, last time I checked.:-(
So what if it isn't free? Big Name Software ported over to Linux will only serve to increase acceptance in Big Name Corporations. Usage in Big Name Corporations will in turn increase both funding and coding resources applied to Linux, accelerating development.
See, more expensive stuff for the Fortune 500 doesn't mean a decrease in free stuff for the rest of the world. If you're looking for more free stuff, you're not gonna buy Domino anyway.
Conversely, PHBs who buy Domino do so because they (need someone to sue || don't trust free software || like the fact that they're blowing big bucks on their IT infrastructure || IBM salesperson told them to).
This will help take the heat off some of us sysads who have been taking fire for bringing a "hobbyist" OS into the workplace.
With Domino and Firewall-1 (and a lot of other server-based software, in the future) VARs and system integrators can now offer Linux-based solutions instead of pricier SCO, Solaris, or NT boxes.
Anything on those Domino vulnerabilities that were making the rounds of Bugtraq a while back? A client of mine was bitten by one of these a few months ago...
> To my fellow slashdotters I ask the following: If you are worried about microsoft products constraining your > choices, do you trust the government to act on your behalf and increase *your* available choices?
You're forgetting something - open source isn't limited to the US of A. If your government suddenly turns repressive and rules Red Hat a monopoly and kills it, SUSE will still be going strong.
The nature of open source is that if it is repressed in one location, it can easily pack up and set up shop in another, less hostile locale. Witness what will probably happen with DeCSS.
>He had some pretty good responses. And I hope, those of you that are script kiddies take heed of his request. Discovering a security hole >and reporting it is respectable, but taking a reported security hole and exploiting it is despicable.
I wouldn't say "despicable"... maybe "pathetic".
Wonderful peek into the life of a fellow sysadmin. True, script kiddies are annoying, but they're just that - annoying. Not dangerous, or threatening. In my experience, it's the PHBs that scream bloody murder when they find out we get routinely probed every day.
This is why web page defacements are more irritating that root break-ins - because the former makes the PHBs take notice, even though the latter takes a LOT more work to clean up. I'd prefer to deal with a machine than a few irate VPs.
Funny, though. The few script kiddies I've actually taken the time to talk to all tell me they dream of getting hired by some company on the basis of their 'leet skills. Heh. Just goes to show you how much they know about our jobs.
I've just finished my MS, but I have absolutely no plans to pack up for Silicon Valley and "hit it big", as all my former classmates are doing.
Sitting back, enjoying a good game of Starcraft or Homeworld from time to time, and making sure the lusers are properly thankful whenever you get off your ass to fix something. Love being a BOFH.
Whenever someone starts to complain, I pull out my last payslip and show it to 'em. No, you're not paying me what I'm worth. So if you gonna make me stay late, you gotta make sure I'm properly bribed.
Of course, things can go wrong - change of bosses, and maybe some fresh-faced MCSE'll walk in and take over my job... but there's plenty of good jobs out here in the boonies, what with all the actual tech people going up and packing for California...
Slashdot Mirror
I'm waiting for a GTA-style, gritty, urban adventure like this.
ASCIItution and mayhem!
Might wanna check out Liberal Crime Squad, also by Bay12. Not as rogue-like as DF but still fun.
I've been to India. The Indian space program is a huge source of national pride for them. Being able to put satellites in orbit and handle their own GPS system has numerous benefits for a developing country (some of the projects we were shown included cheap GPS units for fishermen's cooperatives, and infrared monitoring of farmlands). I have no doubt that if they were able, they'd be trying to put a man on the moon as well.
Don't think that just because most of the world is poor and hungry, they have no interest in space travel. Regardless of our nationality, we all look to the sky and dream.
I don't think you understand the depths of poverty people living on $1 a day reach. Think of the same lifestyle as a homeless person here, except with no social services, no soup kitchens, no shelters. Not even the shopping cart full of junk. Doesn't seem too exciting to me, but maybe because I've lived next to such people for most of my life.
For 12 years I lived on $10 a day. That's living a low-end grad student lifestyle - i.e. just enough for dialup, a mid-range computer, tiny apartment, the bare essentials. $20 a day would probably get you the same lifestyle as a lower middle-class US worker.
$50 a day would probably better fit your definition of "comfortable" - still quite doable, especially if you sink some money into a local business.
Also note, as more and more money flows back into the country's economy, cost of living goes up (as there are lots of these young call-center workers who can afford more stuff), so in a few more years, plan on moving somewhere else. Africa?
> Oh, you also intended to start working right now on an agricultural wiki in Farsi/bhantou/whatever ?
They're not going to go on Slashdot and participate in flame wars. This is a way of enabling people in those countries who write in local languages to make their own local information available to more people.
Consider a local aid worker who makes a agricultural webpage (or even works on translations of existing web pages) and makes that available on the local network grid these $100 laptops are hooked to. You have the capability to be distribute your information to hundreds of remote farmer's cooperatives or collectives, and send almost-real-time updates on pest breakouts and market prices.
But yes, conceivably, some sort of Speak-and-spell-type software can also be used to teach illiterates to read. You have a screen, you have a speaker. Use them.
They don't even need access to the general Internet, just access to each other. Enabling communication between two villages that don't have any serviceable roads between them is a huge factor, and if the grid network of this laptop is effective, VOIP or IM can even serve to replace more expensive phone systems.
For those more cynical among you that say poor countries need political stability first, a local revolutionary movement can use these computers to coordinate and exchange information between cells or send information in/out of a repressive regime - again, better information, education and communication tools will be extremely useful in a lot of situations.
I guess you haven't been in a third world country yet.
This won't directly go to the "poorest people in the world"... this will go to the slighty less poor folk trying to help them. I'd imagine a lot of these will end up in farmer's cooperatives or collectives, used to distribute information to the farmers themselves. Sure, an illiterate farmer can't use a computer, but the local aid workers or agriculturists can.
And even if the parents are illiterate, the presence of cheap computers available at the local library will help make sure their children aren't (with $100 computers and some form of wireless access, small rural libraries are now feasible in areas where shipping books in useful quantities are too expensive).
I've seen a project in India where a guy accesses the US Navy Geographical Survey page, looks up local weather conditions, and broadcasts the current weather report over short-wave radio every morning to the local fishing villages. The main problem was maintaining an Internet connection and computer for the announcer guy. Being able to deploy even one computer and 'net connection (rudimentary dialup, whatever) per village instead of only in the bigger population centers will help in disseminating this information to more people.
The organizers aren't as completely out of touch with reality as some people here, it seems.
... that turned nasty.
I think (especially since the perp was 41 years old) that this was merely a dispute between two MMO farmers over money.
Hey... probably business partners, running a small computer shop/farm... possibly they ran two separate farms. Found the item while in a party/grouped. Agreed to split the proceeds when the sword was sold.
And one of them doublecrossed the other...
Same story played out in dozens of drug deals every day all over the world.
Serious money is serious money. And I've seen people killed for less...
To quote Sammo Hung:
"Sushi is Japanese. Moron."
Katanas are Japanese. Bushido is Japanese. We're talking about the Chinese - the Middle Kingdom. Try thinking kung-fu and Shaolin, and you'll be closer.
1) Have you actually used a Select or Open license? Do you know how much of a bear it is to actually deploy across an enterprise? (i.e. vastly different from documentation, registry screwups, missing keys etc).
And the Educational versions of above licenses is exactly the same as the retail/OEM version. No additional admin tools, etc...
2) I'm just saying MIS departments who've been burned by the problems experienced with Win2k would be leery of upgrading to a version with an added "activation" feature which can introduce yet another point of installation failure. (especially for those of us outside the US with intermittent/unreliable Internet links).
because its easier to install one monolithic service pack than hundreds of seperate patches to deal with specific security problems as is the norm on the UNIX side of things
:)
Well, most commercial *nixes do have "huge monolithic service packs". I've just finished setting up ten Solaris 2.7 servers, and all I had to do was run the Maintenance Update, then the latest Recommended package zip from Sun. Basically, two service packs.
You've just been looking at the Linuxes, where this level support is not there yet (although Debian and apt-get are getting there.)
Of course, if you routinely install GNU or open source software, you'd have to maintain that yourself, but any competent admin can roll their own update tarballs.
Admins aren't stupid because they use NT. It's just that stupid admins prefer NT. I've met some really competent NT admins, although for some reason they almost always look like they could use a lot more sleep.
Major problem - if you're an MIS tech suddenly faced with upgrading hundreds or thousands of PCs at once, this activation thingy is another thing that can go wrong. Anything that makes MIS's job harder is one less thing they'll be inclined to order.
One reason for the sucky sales of Win2000 - out-of-the-box, it doesn't play well with existing NT installations, so lots of corporate and government MIS departments haven't upgraded yet. This is MS's main revenue stream, the one which pulls in the big bucks. Doesn't matter if the MIS head is a Microserf or not, if the upgrade causes more lost revenues in terms of downtime and tech support than benefits, it's not gonna happen. And yeah, there are a lot of stereotypical PHBs out there, but if an upgrade causes a company to lose actual $$$, as opposed to the "benefits" and "increased productivity" of the upgrade (especially those that have been burned by the Win9x -> Win2k upgrade) even a die-hard non-tech PHB is going to take a second look before signing those purchase orders.
I'm just putting up the figures for anybody who's interested in the actual wages (as opposed to charity ads, etc) of someone over here.
I don't fully agree that if the multi-nationals left, we'd be worse off. Large corporations usually equate to massive corruption. There's also the effects of globalization and the forcing of third world countries to open up their markets, while the US refuses to drop tariffs on imports FROM these same countries.
Yes, in time our economy may develop to a point where we'll be able to compete. But due to the influence of First World governments and multinationals, that may never happen. All they want is sources of cheap raw materials, and masses of consumers for their goods.
Living in a third world country right now (but yes, going to bail soon) I can say that your $1/day figures were pulled out of someone's a$$.
A dishwasher at a local restaurant makes somewhere around $2 a day (along with free board and lodging). Mind you, this is just a dinky little canteen, not a 5-star hotel restaurant. I believe this is the same rate as day labor. Carpenters, plumbers, and other more skilled manual workers make around twice to three times that (i.e. $4 to $6 a day).
Employers are required to pay minimal medical insurance, etc, and are traditionally expected to treat the employee as a (albeit distant) member of his family, which means providing medical help, loans, and other benefits (which can vary widely from employer to employer).
From the price of food, yes, maybe I can feed a family of four on a dollar a day, but that would mean two, sometimes only one meal a day, and we'd be eating a whole lot of rice and dried fish (sometimes just rice and salt).
I make about $8 dollars a day, teaching at a state university (finished a Masters, thank you very much). A programmer in the city can expect anywhere from $15 to $50 (I'd been offered $40 as a VB programmer at a large multinational bank).
Multinationals pay way better than local companies, obviously. Unfortunately, the really plum jobs (director of IT, etc) go to foreigners (no matter that some of the locals have better qualifications). Sometimes the only way to go up is to migrate to a foreign country, get a citizenship, and come back and work for that company as a citizen of a first-world country.
People who work in sweatshops, contrary to common knowledge, are usually high-school graduates. Some are BS degree holders (I've a cousin with a Commerce degree who worked at the Reebok plant for a while, before she shipped out to HK to work as a maid). Hell, the guys at the local McDonalds are all working their way through college.
Children working are few and far between, although yes, some of the stories of workplace harrassment and exploitation are true (esp. for women workers). I'd say most of the exploitation is in the blatant manipulation of governments (i.e. bypassing local ownership requirement laws by setting up trust funds, misuse of employee pension funds, etc) rather than in child labor. But it's exploitation nonetheless.
All right, I'll bite. The US armed forces took the Philippines from the Spanish and subsequently fought the Philippine-American War (1899-1905), against armed opposition from the natives, who'd been fighting the Spaniards for centuries, and now had to contend with Gatling guns and modern warships.
After the rebels were crushed (or in some cases, paid off) the islands were administered as a colony until it was granted independence in 1946. Several recorded atrocities (including a US Army unit ordered to turn the island of Samar into a "howling wilderness" by marching across it and systematically destroying any villages they came across).
Mark Twain spoke up against US colonial aggression overseas, but it seems much of his work has been conveniently expunged from your schoolbooks (good thing they're still in ours).
No, I'm just saying piracy helps Microsoft, at least in getting their products spread out in third world countries.
Most Linux distribs can't be "pirated" - since most distributions allow you to download their software off the web and burn your own CDs. I'm just relating the experience of my local LUG - we find the mass-produced pirate RH cds unusable, because most of the pirates are Win9x users.
Don't have anything against piracy (like I said, used to be a warez kiddie). But as I see it, success for the BSA here means a larger market for free software.
I remember the Microstar expansion sucked, big time, and it was the fans that pushed Blizzard to sue them. The mission editor license specifically stated that you could make your own campaigns, but you could not sell them, without the express permission of Blizzard. I.E. enjoy your campaigns all you want, but you are not allowed to make money off of them. Seemed fair to a lot of us campaign makers.
> Both, actually - clueless AND underfunded.
:) I don't do IRC, so I really can't tell how off the mark you were. :)
> Makes sense. You live there; isn't there a way to get this changed?
I thought we were getting somewhere after the last revolution, but we seem to be backsliding these days. Ah, well. I'm too old to be marching in the streets these days, anyway. My father may be right, you may learn to live with corruption.
> My apologies.
Accepted.
>Do you have anything to back up these 'bribes'? Could they instead have been payments Microsoft made to the local law enforcement for their
>assistance in the raid? This is a pretty common thing, as far as I know. Microsoft hasn't the right to do a raid, and law enforcement doesn't
>always have the time/money to spend on such a thing, so the companies offer to reimburse the law enforcement for their expenses or pay their
>officers overtime. This seems logical and has nothing to do with being 'bribed'...
All right - this isn't in the US. Our local constabulary have to be bribed to investigate murders, kidnappings (most of them, there are a few good cops, though). The BSA doesn't have funds for a major, coordinated, nationwide operation like that one (several large raids, in the period of a couple of weeks). Newspaper articles say "with the cooperation of Microsoft".
> Clueless or underfunded? Really, if they're that clueless, you should write them a letter and send your resumé. They should be DYING to get
> their hands on you, since you're clueful, unlike anybody they have on staff right now, right?
Both, actually - clueless AND underfunded. I know most of the local police, including their chief back then (who did tell me of the baksheesh the BSA handed over to get them to "participate".)
Most of the agents participating in the raid weren't local boys. The local police were paid to "supervise". Actually, most law enforcement here think going after pirates is beneath them (we've got more music pirating than software pirating, here).
> Umm.. It sounds to me like this is an issue with your local newspaper, and not with those responsible for the raid.
Maybe. He was the only shop raided in town. There are at least six or seven. He was the only foreigner (and one the local police didn't particularly like).
> Wow, you are l33t. Were you saying this to enhance your credibility in this thread, or just to show us how long your warezpenis is?
Hmm. I shouldn't reply to an ad hominem attack, but I forgot to mention that I'm NOT one of those "big fish" I mentioned. I used to be one step up from the end-operator - I ran shipments twice weekly from the capital to the province. We didn't have the internet back then, either. CDs, without jewel cases. I don't think the US has any equivalent for what we used to do. And the poor shopkeeper WASN'T a big fish, he was one step below me, and I wasn't even a suspect. The BSA did the raids, took some pictures. Case closed, publicity shoot over. nobody got hurt.
Hey, I'm just offering a view from outside the US. I'm sorry if I came off too "elite", but that was what I was doing eight years ago, to pay my way through college. I had sporadic contact with BBSes (no phones, no Internet, etc) so I'm not up to your terminology.
So here's something near and dear to the hearts of you slashdotters - warez helps microsoft, and hinders open source.
I work in a third world country. Years ago, WordStar was the dominant wordprocessor, Lotus 1-2-3 was the dominant spreadsheet. Microsoft made DOS, and little else.
All pirated of course. We were much too small a market for Lotus or Microsoft to set up shop here.
When Win95 and Office came along, every single office with computers upgraded to it. Warez, naturally - everybody just bought CDs and installed 'em.
So now 1-2-3 and Wordstar are but memories. Every single PC is loaded to the gills with Office 2000 and Win 2000 beta. Microsoft suddenly decides to expand their market presence, and what do they find? Hundreds of secretaries, office workers, and PHBs who already know Word, Excel, Access and Powerpoint.
See, now it's hard for Linux to compete with free copies of Win98 and Win95 floating around (oh, sure, the warez shops also copy Red Hat, but they do it so badly that most Linux CDs here are worthless (they burn under win9x, resulting in broken links, unbootable cds, missing files, etc). Our local LUG has found that the most reliable way to get Linux is to burn it ourselves.
So. Helping the BSA will help Open Source. Think about it.
(Disclaimer - I'm an ex-warez kiddie turned sysadmin. I think the BSA is powerless, in the form it is in right now.)
Don't know if it helps, but two years ago, the BSA staged a raid on a shop down the street from where I live. I believe with the collusion of the local police, gov't agents, etc - I hear a lot of Microsoft money changed hands (i.e. bribes to local gov't officials, "donations" to government offices) in order to do these raids. A major computer school franchise was also raided at the same time.
:)
You probably saw one of these, picture of mounds of confiscated CDs, fake boxes, etc, etc. I agree - publicity is everything. These raids are calculated to instill the fear of piracy in other schools, universities, computer shops.
The problem is, they're too clueless to actually make a dent in the infrastructure. (The local papers trumpeted the "major piracy ring busted" line, and said that poor shopkeeper down the street was the ringleader of the piracy ring, just because he happened to be a foreigner (Belgian). Heh.)
At that time, I just left the local warez scene (I knew who the major suppliers were, I knew people who could ship you Microsoft Office CDs in quantities of thousands, etc, etc.) That shopkeeper was just a customer - he used to buy CDs off me before I got out of the biz. And the raids didn't touch ANY of the big fish, just the small, end-of-the-line shops.
Anyway. Back to the shop down the street. Two weeks later, after a few small bribes to the local constabulary (to get the confiscated equipment back) it's back in business, but this time they're turning away anybody who looked like a suit. They're a bit more careful, but that's all.
Nothing will change. Not until Microsoft gets permission to train and equip its own storm troopers to actually conduct the raids (though, judging from the marketing personnel they've got running the local office, they'll probably do worse.
Thanks.
:-(
Yep, I've personally run into that SMTP relay bit. I don't know all that much about Notes/Domino internals, though, but I did advise my client to move to a more capable MTA. Haven't taken my advice, last time I checked.
So what if it isn't free? Big Name Software ported over to Linux will only serve to increase acceptance in Big Name Corporations. Usage in Big Name Corporations will in turn increase both funding and coding resources applied to Linux, accelerating development.
See, more expensive stuff for the Fortune 500 doesn't mean a decrease in free stuff for the rest of the world. If you're looking for more free stuff, you're not gonna buy Domino anyway.
Conversely, PHBs who buy Domino do so because they (need someone to sue || don't trust free software || like the fact that they're blowing big bucks on their IT infrastructure || IBM salesperson told them to).
This will help take the heat off some of us sysads who have been taking fire for bringing a "hobbyist" OS into the workplace.
With Domino and Firewall-1 (and a lot of other server-based software, in the future) VARs and system integrators can now offer Linux-based solutions instead of pricier SCO, Solaris, or NT boxes.
Anything on those Domino vulnerabilities that were making the rounds of Bugtraq a while back? A client of mine was bitten by one of these a few months ago...
> To my fellow slashdotters I ask the following: If you are worried about microsoft products constraining your
> choices, do you trust the government to act on your behalf and increase *your* available choices?
You're forgetting something - open source isn't limited to the US of A. If your government suddenly turns repressive and rules Red Hat a monopoly and kills it, SUSE will still be going strong.
The nature of open source is that if it is repressed in one location, it can easily pack up and set up shop in another, less hostile locale. Witness what will probably happen with DeCSS.
>He had some pretty good responses. And I hope, those of you that are script kiddies take heed of his request. Discovering a security hole
>and reporting it is respectable, but taking a reported security hole and exploiting it is despicable.
I wouldn't say "despicable"... maybe "pathetic".
Wonderful peek into the life of a fellow sysadmin. True, script kiddies are annoying, but they're just that - annoying. Not dangerous, or threatening. In my experience, it's the PHBs that scream bloody murder when they find out we get routinely probed every day.
This is why web page defacements are more irritating that root break-ins - because the former makes the PHBs take notice, even though the latter takes a LOT more work to clean up. I'd prefer to deal with a machine than a few irate VPs.
Funny, though. The few script kiddies I've actually taken the time to talk to all tell me they dream of getting hired by some company on the basis of their 'leet skills. Heh. Just goes to show you how much they know about our jobs.
I've just finished my MS, but I have absolutely no plans to pack up for Silicon Valley and "hit it big", as all my former classmates are doing.
Sitting back, enjoying a good game of Starcraft or Homeworld from time to time, and making sure the lusers are properly thankful whenever you get off your ass to fix something. Love being a BOFH.
Whenever someone starts to complain, I pull out my last payslip and show it to 'em. No, you're not paying me what I'm worth. So if you gonna make me stay late, you gotta make sure I'm properly bribed.
Of course, things can go wrong - change of bosses, and maybe some fresh-faced MCSE'll walk in and take over my job... but there's plenty of good jobs out here in the boonies, what with all the actual tech people going up and packing for California...